Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Notes, quotes and comment

Frank Viola during the 1987 World
Series. "Sweet Music" was the MVP
of that memorable Series,

The Twins sold Vance Worley to Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

It's no surprise that they moved him out of the organization; as I've written a few times, he didn't fit in the Triple A rotation. Even if, as it now appears, Kyle Gibson isn't going to be optioned out again, Rochester has Alex Meyer, Trevor May, Sean Gilmartin, Kris Johnson and Logan Darnell, all of whom figured to be ahead of Worley.

The Twins didn't get much from Worley, but that doesn't mean the Ben Revere trade was a disaster. May remains, and he was always the higher ceiling piece of the deal. And Revere remains what he was when the Twins traded him, a player of extreme strengths and weaknesses. He should be a usable major leaguer for years; I don't expect him to become a star.

Certainly the Twins expected more than they got from Worley, and certainly the trade would look better had they gotten some decent pitching from him. I don't think his failure means the Twins should regret the trade.

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Frank Viola, one of my faves from the the 1980s Twins, needs heart surgery. It will come next week, and it will keep the 1988 Cy Young Award winner from serving as the pitching coach for the Mets' Triple A affiliate in Las Vegas. Good luck to him.

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I found this fascinating: Joey Votto, the Cincinnati Reds star, says he swings at too many strikes. He wants to be more like Joe Mauer:

... when he says that he’ll swing less in the strike zone this year, he’s talking about really swinging at the pitches he wants to make contact on. In other words, he’d like to be “more in that (Joe) Mauer category, really efficient, swinging at a really low rate inside the strike zone, and outside the strike zone, very rarely swinging.” Nobody swings less than Joe Mauer.

Votto, like Mauer, takes a lot of heat from the local radio ignoramuses who confuse RBIs with productivity.

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Matt Guerrier did re-up with the Twins. While he lost out on his retention bonus, he did get an earlier opt-out date, so he got something out of it.